I judge Kerry as the winner again in this debate.  If I were to numerically score this based on my "gut" I'd give it like this:

Debate #1:
Kerry 5
Bush 2

Debate #2:
Cheney 2
Edwards 1

Debate #3:
Kerry 5
Bush 4

Total so far: Kerry/Edwards: 11  Bush/Cheney: 8

What do you think?

Bush is doing better this time but he's still totally outclassed by Kerry.

The momentum is shifting to Kerry. President Kerry? Republicans may need to get used to that.

The press has been curiously reluctant to report my constant public support for the president's strategy in Iraq and his policies to fight terrorism. I have been involved in the war on terrorism for two decades, and in my view no world leader has better understood the stakes in this global war than President Bush.

The president was right when he concluded that Saddam Hussein was a menace who needed to be removed from power. He understands that our enemies are not confined to Al Qaeda, and certainly not just to Osama bin Laden, who is probably trapped in his hide-out in Afghanistan. As the bipartisan 9/11 commission reported, there were contacts between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime going back a decade. We will win the war against global terror only by staying on the offensive and confronting terrorists and state sponsors of terror - wherever they are. Right now, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Qaeda ally, is a dangerous threat. He is in Iraq.

President Bush has said that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. He is right. Mr. Zarqawi's stated goal is to kill Americans, set off a sectarian war in Iraq and defeat democracy there. He is our enemy.

Our victory also depends on devoting the resources necessary to win this war. So last year, President Bush asked the American people to make available $87 billion for military and reconstruction operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. . . .

Mr. Kerry is free to quote my comments about Iraq. But for the sake of honesty he should also point out that I have repeatedly said, including in all my speeches in recent weeks, that President Bush made a correct and courageous decision to liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein's brutality, and that the president is correct to see the war in Iraq as a central front in the war on terrorism.

Read the whole thing.

We don't discriminate against who we work with. We look for the best and brightest from all over the world. JoeUser.com's Blog Navigator is developed in Poland. Our documentation is written in UK. Some of our artwork is from Canada and other parts from Brazil.  And a lot of JoeUser.com's upcoming ASP.NET stuff will probably be done in Italy.  Is this a bad thing? I don't think so.

Next month we're going to release a Gold Fish Aquarium Desktop. It's incredibly cool. The fish were designed and rendered in Japan by someone who doesn't speak a word of English (we worked together via email via translation software). The scripting was done in the United Kingdom and the Graphics engine was done in Italy.  How is this bad?

It hasn't stopped us from hiring more and more Americans. As some know, we're hiring now. In fact, we hope to add another 8 people internally (Michigan USA) by next Summer (we're a small company and we're very very picky about who we hire so it's a slow process).

The more flexible a country is for hiring workers, the better off everyone is. We wouldn't have been able to afford the developers who made JoeUser.com (the IT people working on JU are all American working from Michigan). And they work seamlessly with the Blog Navigator team in Poland. Everyone wins.

So next time you hear someone demonizing outsourcing, don't be fooled. It's not always bad. Like most things, it's sometimes bad and sometimes it's not.

Here are 5 items that I would like any future President to consider if they want to actually help the United States economcially -- to create new jobs for Americans.

#1 Tort reform. People hear about company A suing company B all the time. Or an individual (or group of individuals) suing some company.  I got personally sued this past year. Want to know why? Because my employer (I'm the CEO but it's a class C corporation) didn't agree to just let some company use our popular icon format without a license so they sued me personally as well as our company. Totally frivelous in my opinion (ultimately settled out of court but not before tens of thousands of dollars were spent).

#2 Lower taxes on companies.  Make this up by eliminating some loopholes (such as John Edwards who creates an S corporation that pays him through dividends - clever but slimey and legal). Fewer taxes means more money to hire more people.  One easy way would be to have C corporations have lower tax brackets if they net less than $1 million a year. Then you'd have less incentive to set up as an S corporation where a lot of these loopholes exist.  BTW, Kerry's promise to raise taxes on those who make $200k or more is a bad idea.

#3 Make it easier to get work visas for foreign workers.  Better to have them coming here to the United States than us contracting them overseas which is what we're currently stuck doing often times. Then they're here in the US buying things and contributing to the economy.  We don't discriminate when we work with people. We want to work with the best and brightest regardless of their location. Whether that's Poland, UK, Italy or USA. But those who want to come to the US should be able to come here and the government should make that painless.

#4 Let small companies pool together for health care. In Europe, health care is free so I can just work with people in Europe who are just as qualified without having to pay for their health care.  Let small businesses, the guys creating the jobs right now, band together to be able to get cheaper healthcare for their employees.

#5 Matching funds for college students who get a B average or better -- NOT means tested. 

About a year ago a friend of mine was telling me how satellite radio was going to be the next big thing and that I should buy stock in a company called Sirius Satellite. I'm pretty conservative as an investor, but in a moment of recklessness my wife and I put a considerable chunk of our savings into the Siri stock.  The stock didn't do as well as I had hoped but I continued to believe that I should stick with it.

This past summer, I even had a screenshot of me lamenting my decision to buy Siri since it had not gone up as well as I had hoped and seemed to be on the decline. But I never did get around to selling it and low and behold, today Howard Stern announced he was going to be going over to Sirius Satellite next year. A huge boon for the up and coming company.

My view is that over time, more and more "stuff" is going to be sent via satellite to cars and households. With XM Radio nearly its peak, Siri seemed like a good long term bet. So today's big stock jump was a welcome surprise. So I guess sometimes it's good to sit on ones stock.

Cheney appears to have decidedly beaten Edwards.  Edwards just appeared a little bit out of his depth. I think Edwards could have stood up well against Bush, but Cheney just looked like a seasoned pro.

I don't think this will have much affect on the polls though as the veeps just don't make that much of a difference.

I think the key sound bites were very much in Cheney's favor -- i.e. the sound bites that will get repeated will show Cheney hammering Edwards and that is where it could make a difference.

Where Kerry defeated Bush, so far, watching the veep debate, Cheney is wiping the floor with Edwards.

Edwards sounds like he's just a walking talking point droid. Cheney, on the other hand, sounds like a seasoned pro. We'll see how things continue...

We've been struggling with what kind of printer we need to have at the office.  Some guys are into music. Others are into cars. I'm into high quality printers. In other words, I'm a geek.

The one we used to have died after 4 years -- a Phaser 850DX (aka "Sophie").  We had a newer printer, it's successor, the Phaser 8400.  It is essentially the same printer. Which is okay except I was hoping for better quality in printing.  It's main difference over the 850DX is speed. The 8400 prints very very fast.  The 8400 is a terrific work horse color printer. I love the solid ink in it - very easy to deal with. And its output is more than good enough for most uses.

But I really want a printer that can print 12 pages per minute or higher that can also print very very high quality images. I.e. Magazine level images.  I'm not that price conscious as quality is important.  When you're sending screenshots of your stuff to editors, it's important that you are able to convey clearly and nicely what you are trying to get across.

So we're also looking at the Phaser 7750. It's gotten very good reviews, but I'm still not sure if it can produce the quality I'm looking for.  When I say high quality, I mean very high quality. Not $1500 HP color laser printer type stuff where photos look nice if you're not looking close.

I'm not even sure if they make printers yet that do that kind of quality for under $10,000 yet.  So my search continues. But if you reading this have any suggestions or pointers, please feel free to share them.

Tonight is the vice presidential debate. VP debates don't tend to make that much of a difference in the bigger scheme of things.

Usually what happens is that people end up wishing the VPs were at the head of the ticket.  That was certainly the case last time when Cheney and Lieberman got along so well and had a good, spirited debate in which both showed a great deal of respect to one another.

I think you will see something similar this year.  Cheney had the Halliburton anchor on his neck. But Edwards is the poster child of the ambulance chaser. His claim to fame (and fortune) is that he essentially made C-sections a much more common way for delivery for liability reasons. 

To Democrats, Cheney is the poster child of the big business puppet. The avatar of the corporate stranglehold that surrounds modern federal candidates.  To Republicans, Edwards is the reason we pay so much in health care -- ridiculously high liability insurance. He represents a culture that believes that doctors should be sued not merely out of malpractice but simply if the result of their work is unfavorable.  And we all pay the price.

That is what will make this debate so interesting.  Edwards is loathed by Republicans -- representing everything that Republicans are against. And Cheney is loathed by Democrats as representing exactly why the "anyone but Bush" mantra exists in the first place.